A sad mystery in trial of Pickton

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - The trial of Robert
"Willie" Pickton was filled with stories of pain and horror,
but perhaps the saddest of all is the unfinished tale of Jane
Doe.

Pickton will be sentenced on Tuesday after his conviction
on Sunday for the second-degree murder of six women. Sentencing
will conclude the first of two scheduled trials for the pig
farmer, who is accused of killing a total of 26 women and
butchering their bodies in his slaughterhouse.

Jane Doe's bones were also found on Pickton's farm and he
was briefly charged with her death. But the charge was dropped
by the court because police have never been able to determine
who she was, where she came from, and when she died.

The moniker "Jane Doe" was used for identification purposes
in court documents.

If anyone missed the woman when she disappeared in the
early 1990s, they never reported it to authorities.

Police have known about the woman's death since February
1995, when half of her skull was found in the mud along the
Fraser River in Mission, British Columbia, a bedroom community
east of Vancouver on Canada's Pacific Coast.

The investigation into how she died went nowhere at the
time. But after Pickton's arrest in 2002, DNA from the skull
was matched with bones found on Pickton's farm. The severed
skulls of three other women were also found in buckets on the
farm.

Jurors were initially allowed to hear about Jane Doe, but
the judge changed his mind midway through the trial. The reason
for that ruling is subject to a court publication ban that may
not be lifted until after Pickton is tried on the remaining 20
murder counts.
Continued...